There was a time, not long ago, when the team known as the Florida Marlins was winning two World Series in seven years in front of friends and family in a stadium built for football, when it was worth it to wonder if Miami deserved a major-league baseball team.

What’s happening in and around the Marlins right now isn’t being dubbed “The Bronx Zoo” or a “circus,” like other teams in other major markets. But the clowns and jugglers and bears on unicycles still have the run of the place. The high hopes of a season built on reinvention and promise have blown up in everybody’s faces.

They had a new name, finally acknowledging their home market. They had a publicly-financed museum/amusement park of a baseball-only stadium. They had a World Series-winning attention-magnet of a manager. They had big-money roster additions like Jose Reyes.

But … they’re in last place going into the season’s final full week. They’ve already had a fire sale, reminiscent of the ones in past years that the new surroundings were supposed to prevent. They have the ever-present cloud of an SEC investigation into who promised what to whom to pay for the $635 million ballpark.

They also have empty seats in that ballpark – they have the third-lowest average attendance in the National League, and earlier this summer, Forbes.com reported that the team is on pace for the lowest full-season attendance at a new stadium since 1982.

And the manager and owner are feuding.

That manager, Ozzie Guillen, is on the hot seat because owner Jeffrey Loria is tired of him running his mouth. Also, Loria is considering firing rainstorms because he’s tired of them being wet. More on that later.

According to the Palm Beach Post, the owner objects to being “called out” by Guillen recently. It was not specified which of Guillen’s recent comments angered him. These, from last week’s home stand, might be candidates, the Post reported:

“When you are in last place you need a better manager, better general manager, better owner, a better everything when you are a last-place team because we all failed. …

“Whoever works for the Marlins and denies that he should be fired is full of (expletive). My coaches, myself, the front office, my players, we’re all involved in this thing. We all failed. And we’ve got to be better. Hopefully we learn by the mistakes we made and we move on. …

“I can see good things happen soon. How soon is it going to be? The players will dictate how soon it’s going to be. Everybody in this ball club should look at themselves in the mirror.”

The, during the road trip to play the Mets, there was this: “If Jeffrey doesn’t think I’m doing the job I should do … it’s not the first time he’s fired a manager. Look yourself in the mirror and ask why so many (bleeping) managers come through here.”

The answer would be six since Loria became owner in 2002. It includes Fredi Gonzalez, who was pushed out in midseason two years ago, walked right into the Braves job and has done just fine – and who, coincidentally, also took a shot at Loria over the weekend, in remarks that Loria later called “classless” and said came from someone who was “a colossal failure” with the Marlins.

It also includes Joe Girardi, who got the boot after a season in which he was named NL manager of the year. He’s done fairly well at another location since.

Can Loria fire a second manager with a world title on his resume? Well, he hired one who talked nonstop and without a filter, and now is angry that he talks nonstop and without a filter. Figure that out.

Then figure out, as much of an abrasive lightning-rod as he is, what Guillen said that was not true. If nothing else positive came out of the controversy over Guillen’s published praise for Fidel Castro last spring, everybody learned that Guillen speaks his mind, stands behind his words and takes responsibility for them.

That’s not necessarily the track record of the Marlins’ franchise overall, or its owner.

Which is too bad. This relationship between the Marlins and Miami has never seemed comfortable. And it gets more uneasy by the day as the franchise slips further into chaos.

That’s life as a baseball fan in South Florida: name-calling, finger-pointing and staying at home and away from the ballpark you paid for because the team that’s not worth the money spent to construct it.